More suspected al-Qaeda members are flown to a US detention centre at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba amid concern from human rights groups over the conditions in which they are kept.

Thursday 28 February

A US soldier and an attack dog

More than 100 of the terror suspects being held by the US at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba launched a hunger strike.
The protest appeared to have been prompted by two guards removing an inmate's turban while he was praying.

US citizen John Walker Lindh becomes the only detainee from Afghanistan to be charged in an American court with plotting terrorist acts. It is alleged he aided Osama Bin Laden's al-Qaeda network and conspired to kill US citizens.

British diplomats visited the three Britons held at the camp and say they are all in good health and none complained of ill treatment. They say food at the camp complied with their religious beliefs; prayer mats
had been issued and the call to prayers was relayed over the camp's
public address system.

The United States is pressing ahead with the expansion of its prison camp for Taleban and al-Qaeda terror suspects at the Guantanamo naval base in Cuba. Hundreds more detainees remain in custody in Afghanistan, awaiting transfer to the Camp X-Ray.

As the military camp at Guantanamo Bay does not fall within American sovereign territory, the prisoners have no legal rights under the US constitution, and no right of appeal to federal courts. There is growing concern for their welfare among international humanitarian groups.

The United States has begun taking al-Qaeda and Taleban prisoners to a US base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba. US Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said they would be treated humanely and within the terms of the Geneva Conventions. It has emerged a British man is among the first 20 to be taken to Cuba.

US military officials say they are suspending transfers of prisoners from Afghanistan to the US Navy base at Guantanamo Bay.
They say this is to allow detention facilities to be added and upgraded. The decision comes amid growing international criticism of the suspects' conditions.